Council approves contract with new engineering firm

Monday night, the Buckeye Lake Village Council approved a contract with Jobes, Henderson & Associates, Inc. to design a $503,000 stormwater drainage project. Construction will likely begin next spring.

Council members unanimously approved entering into contract with Jobes, Henderson following an Aug. 1 public service committee meeting where Jobes, Henderson President Jim Roberts answered questions that council member Clay Carroll posed.

“It was all minor and details,” said Roberts Wednesday. “That was fine.” He said he had no problem making the changes, which included adding a rates sheet that details hourly fees, and removing a sentence from the “construction monitoring” section of the contract that Carroll believes is redundant. The deleted sentence read, “Construction monitoring shall not be a part of this contract, unless specifically stated in the scope of the services.” Also, Buckeye Lake administrators now have 14 days to review and accept submitted electronic data and design files before being charged for making changes to the submitted plans. Previously, the client had only seven days. The current contract drops the need for a retainer to ensure payment from the client. “We don’t even use retainers anymore,” said Roberts, who added that retainers were primarily for privately funded projects, not government projects like Buckeye Lake’s. He said he answered other questions to Carroll’s satisfaction and those questions didn’t lead to contract changes.

To fund the project, the village will receive about $358,000 from an Ohio Public Works Commission grant, a roughly $119,000 no interest loan, and the village would contribute around $ 25,000 toward the project, which will replace 3,688 feet of storm water tile and 22 existing storm water structures with 26 new catch basins.

The replacement project extends south along Hebron Road from the village limit to Highland Avenue and then from Hebron Road east along 6th Avenue and then south on North Street. The system will continue to discharge into Waste Weir Run near the Buckeye Lake Fire Station.

Roberts said there’s no official timeline for the project yet, but he believes actual construction may not begin until next spring because trying to finish the project by the end of this year may affect the project’s overall quality.

Director of Development Valerie Hans said the project would likely go to bid this fall to select a contractor to for the construction work. There will be a public meeting to discuss the project Aug. 18, 5 to 7 p.m. at the Village Offices.

In other village news:

• The Buckeye Lake Mopar event scheduled for Aug. 13 and 14 is cancelled because only a few local businesses offered to participate. It is only the Buckeye Lake event that’s cancelled. The National Trail Raceway Mopar event is still taking place as planned.

• Council President Charlene Hayden said she looked into local activist Bonnie Mansfield’s request to convert the Buckeye Lake Public Library into a spay and neuter clinic for dogs and cats when the library moves to a new location. Hayden said she met with a library board member who said the library probably won’t vacate its building until after the first of the year. “There is still a lot to done on their new space,” she said. Currently, the village owns the building and rents it to the library for $1 per year.

Hayden said Hans researched the building’s annual utility costs and found all of them except for electric. Annual property tax is also unknown because libraries are tax-exempt. Hayden said she estimated $175 per month for electricity and estimated the building’s yearly cost at $5,679.60. “If the tenant has to pay property taxes, the cost for the building will be in excess of $6,000 per year,” she said.

• Hayden said the Village Hall planting project is progressing. “As you will remember, we received $2,000 from State Farm Insurance Company and we decided to use the money to beautify the area in front of our building,” she said. The planting should be completed Sept. 21. “Early in the summer, the group did an extended planting at the entrance to the village and lost a couple arborvitaes,” said Hayden. “So, they decided to wait until the temperatures were a little cooler before doing the planting for this project.” She said there was not enough money left for a sign.

• Mayor Rick Baker said he met with Insurance Services Office Field Representative Thomas Young. “We’ve been looking forward to that for a long time,” he said. “We’re on our way to get lower rates.” Young said previously that the fieldwork should take two to three days to complete, but another 60 to 90 days is necessary to determine the village’s new rating.

Basically, the ISO rates fire departments on a scale of one to 10 as far as effectiveness, and fire insurance rates are based on that number. One is most effective and 10 is not effective at all. Buckeye Lake is currently rated nine, but that rating was set before the village had a public water system with fire hydrants.

Buckeye Lake Fire Chief Pete Leindecker said previously he hopes that the availability of public water and other efforts will help improve the village’s ISO rating to six or seven. Depending upon each insurance carrier and how it does business, lowering the rating from nine to six could lower fire insurance costs by roughly 40 percent, but that’s extremely variable and there’s no guarantee the fire department will reach its goal.